Are you truly thankful?

Have you even asked yourself the question, "Am I truly Thankful?"  I want to ask this question this morning from two perspectives.  The first is the perspective of that which I am thankful for.  The word Thankful is broken into a root and a suffix - Thank and ful.  Literally thankful is to be full of thanks.  And so the things for which I am to be thankful for is all things.  Paul says as much in 1 Thessalonians 5:19 ". . . in everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."  We are to give thanks in everything.  Now the trouble as I examine my life is that I have taken thankfulness to mean gratitude for those things that please me.  I tend to place myself at the center of the universe and when I do so I can divide my life into two categories - those things for which I am thankful and those things that I am not thankful for.  The problem with this very human perspective is that it is not biblical.

The second approach is related to the first but slightly tuned.  I then think about how often I give thanks.  Paul a few verses earlier says, "Rejoice always."  At all times and in all things we are to give thanks.  When I focus on the things for which I am thankful as the things that please me then the moment the pleasure goes away I often cease to be thankful.  I am thankful for a meal at dinner time but if at 9 PM I am suddenly snacky I somehow forget to be thankful for the meal I ate less than a few hours ago.  If God blesses me with something but then a few days later I experience hardship I tend to focus on the hardship and forget the blessing. 

At the end of the day the trouble with both the what and the how often of thankfulness tends to demonstrate that I am far too focused on myself.  My thankfulness is determined by what God and others are doing for me and my thankfulness is only as frequent as the feeling of euphoria.  I need to change perspective so that my thankfulness is biblical.  When it is biblical my thanks will be ever present and continual.  I will truly be full of thanks.  Thankful.